National Archives and Records Administration

The National Archives and Records Administration issues publications, as well as a variety of other documents, that reference the activities and organization of the Federal government. NARA's Office of the Federal Register (OFR) publishes the Federal Register every business day, updated online as of 6 a.m. Eastern Time. The OFR also publishes the U.S. Government Manual, the Privacy Act Issuances Compilation, the Public Laws, and the Code of Federal Regulations.

United States Congress on the Internet

There are significant resources available through the internet for those interested in the U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives and the Senate have their own home pages with information on members and their legislative activities as well as links to government Internet sites in all three branches of government. The House page contains the U.S. House Internet Law Library. In addition this site includes over 1,600 links to the law resources of the Internet.

In 1995 year a comprehensive WWW site for Congress called THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internethas been established by the Library of Congress. THOMAS features on-line keyword searches of current legislation, as well as directories of members and much more.

Executive Branch on the Internet

The Executive branch of the Federal government has a growing number of Internet sites. The White House home page is a good introduction to Executive and Independent agencies.

Part of the inspiration for improving electronic access to the Federal government has come from the National Performance Review led by Vice President Al Gore. For more information on NPR you can visit VP Gore's Reinvention Toolkit. Leading the effort is the National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative. NII has mandated that agencies increase the availability of electronic data and information on the Internet. One of the key programs in this initiative is the Government Information Locator Service (GILS). The goal of GILS is to provide both the public and agencies with a catalog to information and data collected and stored by the Federal government. NARA has been active in the development of implementation guidelines for GILS. Many of NARA's information resources are available through theNARA GILS server.

For those trying to locate specific agencies or services, Fedworld is a very helpful site. Fedworld has lin ks to most of the Internet sites maintained by the Federal government indexed by subject. You can also find reports and technical information available through the Federal government at this site maintained by the National Technical Information Service.

U.S. Federal Courts Information on the Internet

For information on the Judicial branch of the Federal government a good place to start is a site called Understanding the Federal Courts.

For physical access to U.S. District Court cases, bankruptcy, civil or criminal you might need to visit one of NARA's Federal Records Centers as the Federal courts store many of their records at these re gional records centers. This link will take you to a geographical listing of the centers and the information on court records will be under the title "Services for the General Public."

National Archives and Records Administration

webmaster@nara.gov
Last updated: May 21, 1997